


Strength

by Kass



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29567904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kass/pseuds/Kass
Summary: "Why should we care abut someone whose own parents didn't even want her?"
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Purimgifts 2021





	Strength

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/gifts).



  
"Why should we care abut someone whose own parents didn't even want her?"

I could hear the disdain in Opal's voice. We were supposed to be practicing calligraphy in silence, but she knew she wouldn't get in trouble if our tutor caught her talking. Besides, our tutor had left the room, and we would hear her footsteps before she returned.

Opal had been mad at me ever since I crushed her stupid dollhouse. And I was not going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that her cruelty had landed.

I pretended I couldn't hear her, selecting a brush of fire-ferret hair. I liked the sharpness of the lines I could write with that brush. Opal preferred sky bison-hair brushes. They were soft, like her.

"Mom doesn't like it when you say that stuff," Wei said mildly.

"Mom's not here right now," Opal pointed out.

I delicately touched my brush tip to the ink stone, rotating it in my fingers so the bottom third of the ferret hair became black. Into the deeper end, then brushing off the excess at the shallow end of the stone.

"I don't want to get in trouble just because you two don't get along," Wing whispered.

I tipped the brush at a steep angle, turning, dipping, refining. When it had enough of a point, I set it to rest on the carved holder and looked down at my paper.

"Don't you feel sorry for her, though?" Huan always managed to make me feel worse even when he was supposedly defending me.

"No," Opal said, indignant. "She ruins everything."

I remembered how it felt to destroy her dollhouse, its flimsy walls folding and compacting. Satisfying. Like crushing a bug.

Clack, clack, clack. Sandals clopping down the hall. Our tutor came back in the room and bent to inspect Opal's work first.

"Hey," Bataar said softly. "Don't listen to them."

I looked up from my paper. "I'm not."

"Opal's just jealous because you can bend and she can't."

"Opal's jealous because she wanted to be the only girl in the family," I murmured back.

"Who cares." Bataar glanced at his siblings, leaned closer, and whispered, "I like having you here."

An unfamiliar warmth blossomed in my chest.

And then he looked back down at his calligraphy, and so did I. With a steady hand I took my brush and drew the first strokes of the character for strength.

"Good, Kuvira," our tutor said approvingly from behind me. "Steady, strong lines."


End file.
